GRC on cilia 2005 was held 02/27/2005-03/04/2005 at Santa Ynez Valley
Marriot in Buellton, California, within an hour drive from thousands
of beautiful wineries and scenic beaches. The conference was essentially
separated into two parts, cilia and mucus. I presented a poster in the
former part.

Cilia are microtubule-rich, hair-like cellular extensions and are highly
conserved organelles among the species. The assembly and maintenance
of these organelles require intraflagellar transport (IFT) and a loss
of IFT related proteins causes several diseases such as polycystic kidney
disease. Before this conference I have thought a conference on cilia
would be a very specialized field, but it was not. Cilia are one of the
essential components of cell signaling and can work at the center of
this activity. Leaders in this field including Joel Rosenbaum, an authority
on IFT, Susan Dutcher, and Peter Satir attended this meeting. Discussions
were so active that the chairperson sometimes had to stop them to allow
the session to continue.

I heard many research topics on cilia as cellular sensors. I am working
with early developing mouse embryos, in which rotating cilia in the node
(the organizer) produce leftward fluid flow (nodal flow) and the direction
of the flow determines left-right (L-R) asymmetry. These nodal cilia
are also thought to be sensors of nodal flow, triggering asymmetric calcium
influx at the edge of the node, leading to the first asymmetric gene
expression. In this meeting I reported our preliminary work that the
cilia in the node might not be the flow sensors.

Although I tended to hesitate in making discussion because of my difficulty
in speaking English, many of the graduate students I met from other countries
had a strong desire to learn and to discuss. Active discussion with many
researchers is my future task. Totally I got a lot from this conference.
This was great experience to me.

Finally I thank everyone who helped me and the COE program for financial
support and for providing me this great opportunity.